Strings
by Kako Koritsi
Summary: I was a puppet that lost its strings, and He was the scissors that cut them. (An amazing reviewer has said I need a trigger warning for this, so here you are- sorry for taking so long to get to it.)


**I had a major formatting issue when I first posted this. Now, it's readable, yay! **

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><p>Everything is lost. Everything is gone, finished, dead. It's dead to your eyes and mine, but not to His; Him, whose beauty is blinding, whose mind is morokei.<p>

He says to stop, stop this nonsense, that everything is fine and it will always be so. That nothing has gone wrong, nothing has changed, nothing will change

"It's okay, little mortal," He'll say, and I think that I'll believe Him, and that's what hurts the most; the fact that the only truth in my life will come from a madman who can only tell of false tales.

and I'm starting to think that's the reason I'm so scared.

Everything has to move, switch, flicker. It has to live and die, breath and gasp, kiss and slap. It has to caress and kill, be and forget- it can't stay the same, can it?

No, it can't. He is lying, or telling the truth, or maybe both, because He's a Prince

"Daedra, they're called," He told me, golden irises flooding with the richest emotions, none of them I could name. "I'm one of them. Well, kind of." I asked Him what He meant, and He smiles a smile full of nostalgia and regret.

and a Daedra, a Daedric Prince, the epitome of change and chaos. No, He's the god of chaos, of madness, of everything I have become, and maybe that's simply another thing I'm just coming to terms with.

Right now.

As I float. And I fly. And I feel.

And fall.

And, perhaps that's all I've been doing, all I've been being before I met Him. All the things I haven't been before He graced me with His presence come to me only now, and I don't think

"I'm a Prince, a Daedric Prince. It hasn't always been that way, you know." He leans in, all dark grin and crazy eyes, the breath brushing against my cheek smelling of blood and cheese and knowledge and desire and so, so many more things I can never grasp. "Used to be different," He muses, thoughtful and thoughtless and wise and ignorant. "Used to be better."

that I can live with that realization.

Ha.

Ha, ha, ha. That was funny.

I made a joke.

(I'm not alive, I was never alive, but now I'm talking as if I am, as if I was, and gods that is really really funny, I mean really funny excepthowitreallyjustispainfulandnotfunnyatallandI'mnotlaughinganymore)

He's telling me to calm down now, but I think I already am. That's why my heart is pounding against the four-pillared cage in my chest, that's why the only thing that can make its sweet sound acknowledged by my ears is my own screams

and His voice, always His voice, why wouldn't I ever hear His beautiful voice

and His sweet tones. (Oh, there it is, I was waiting, you shouldn't keep Me waiting little mortal, you wouldn't like Me when I'm bored)

I remember that one time, that one time when I asked Him why He hates Himself. He just kind of looked at me funny, face so expressive and so stoic, and His words were like memories that could never leave my mind.

"What's not to hate?" He questions, answer mercy to my being, my being that breaks apart each second. "I am a monster. I used to be so beautiful, so fresh, so young

and I don't doubt it, I still think He is beautiful and fresh and young and old and wise and kind and cruel and meaningful and worthless and worthwhile and truthful and dark and (ohgodSheogorathIloveyousomuchmybeautifulbeautifulmadman)

and now I am this." The teasing letters of His words tickle my spine and stab my heart, and I want to tell Him how morokei He is, has always been to me, but He is already gone.

I don't know what He does, my benevolent and flawless Lord, when He is away. The flowers that bloom in Mania like to spread their rumors, singing about how our god visits the stone statue of Martin Septim, telling the lost heir about how the world has passed by. The name always rings in my head like things that I try to forget do, so I ignore them.

Sometimes, I ask

I like to lie in the grass and watch the ants and wish I were one of them in their underground maze safe from the darkness of people horrible people I will kill them all kill the ants kill the people kill everything

the dying trees of Dementia where our god goes when He is not home in the Isles. They don't spread rumors like the daffodils and roses but their stories are less bittersweet and more sour. They tell how He visits Lucien Lachance's corpse

oh, dear little ones, isn't he a traitor

poor Lucien, cold Lucien, calm Lucien, clever Lucien, pretty Lucien (!eid lliw ecnahcaL neicuL) I don't think I understand anymore

and apologizes and wishes and regrets. They say that Lucien is the reason that our Lord is our Lord, that the Champion is Sheogorath, and the idea makes my head spin and my soul ache until that also becomes one of the things I want to forget so I ignore them, too.

Of course, He will never tell me, and I will never ask. That is the way it is and will always be, I think. Something permanent, something solid.

Something to be destroyed.

(He tells me, when I ask Him, that He drinks under the stone wings of Martin Septim and weeps against the grave of Lucien Lachance whenever He goes away, and ends it with a night with Sanguine, and that becomes another thing I want to forget.)

Forgetting becomes easier as the days pass, until I can't remember. I can't remember anything except for His kisses and His touches, His words and His thoughts, His mercy and His punishment. Except, sometimes, I can't remember those things either; sometimes, I can only remember nothing, but nothing is wrong. Nothing has changed. Nothing will (for)ever change.

I can only remember nothing. I am only nothing. I only have nothing.

(He tells me I have Him, but I know He has me, and I don't think He wants me anymore.)

(He doesn't answer.)

Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin

naal ok zin los vahriin

wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal

Ahrk fin norok paal graan

fod nust hon zindro zaan

Dovahkiin, fah hin kogaan mu draal

We used to walk across the tundra of Skyrim, every now and then. Skyrim, oh Skyrim, the place of new beginnings. Well, new beginnings for me.

(We met in Skyrim. I was just a little spec in the planes of life but He yet sought me out when I ventured into places I shouldn't. We had tea, or we would've had tea, but I was too blind to His beauty and it never really happened. He sent me on a few trials and I fulfilled them just to be free, a foolish thought

we are never free

but He went along with it still. We went our separate ways, and He have me a stick

a staff

it was called the Wabbajack

maybe I'm smarter because I know cats can be bats can be rats can be that's can be thises and doors can be bores can be snores can be floors can be roars can be spores can be yours can be mine

but it wasn't the last time we met- no, it was the first, and the first is never the last except when it is.)

The second time we met I can't remember, but it had something to do with Greenmote and pleasure and love and Sanguine, oh I can remember Him, can see Sanguine grinning in the corner like the Prince of dark indulgences that He is.

Dark indulgences.

Booze. Addictions. And that, that other thing...

Oh.

(He doesn't like where this has gone. I think I've made Him uncomfortable, or maybe, just maybe, I've made Him so terribly horribly comfortable that it hurts in all the perfect ways. Sometimes He makes me feel like that, too.)

The third time we met, He had an invitation. Only, it didn't feel like the third time. It felt like the only time that mattered, like the last time for my mortality, like the very first time all over again. He was already in my mind by then, the deepest bruise in my fragile psyche, and when He asked if I wanted to join Him in His Realm, I don't think it was ever a true question.

Ever a choice.

(I was always going to come with Him, you see, and I knew it almost as much as He did.)

But sometimes, we would stroll along the tundra of Skyrim. I would shout at the dragons and He would dance along the flames of a giant's campfire, on the edges of blue moth's wing, singing and laughing and being all that He is and ever could be and will continue to be forever.

(I think that I started to fall in love with Him, then.)

And, okay, it hurt. Because even though He loved me

and wow did He love me He loved me sososoverymuch He always promised not to let me go

(I think He lied)

He loved everyone else, too. Told them the same, gave them the same, was always the same. Same, same, same, against His own very nature of change, but that's a chaos all on its own.

(Except for Lucien and Martin, of course. Martin is the one He never had, the last kiss before a sacrifice to the world, the sweetness on His lips accompanied by the bitter disappointments of life. And Lucien, Lucien is the one He had but couldn't keep, the excitement and thrill and pure ecstasy, the one you can't let go of completely when they're snatched away.)

And me?

I am the one that you don't want.

I am the hero that everyone forgot about.

I am the one that forgot himself.

(I think they called me the Dragonborn, but sometimes I think they called me the Dovahkiin, and I don't realize it's the same because I start to remember how they called me the Harbinger and the Arch-Mage and the Guild Master and the Listener and then I just want to forget all over again-!)

I try not to dwell on my old life. That doesn't matter anymore, what I was. The only thing that matters is what I am, what I can be.

And Him. Always Him. Sheogorath is inside of us all, a part of every little mortal and immortal thought. Don't you realize? Sheogorath has already won. He won before it was a game, He won before you were even playing.

(I can't get His name out of my head. I think I need help. I think I needed help a long time ago.)

I wish that I followed my own words sooner, that I became what I was meant to. Because now? Now I have gone too far, I have abandoned my fate. Now I deserve to drift. I was never the hero that the Divines created, never the toy They wanted to make of me. I was a puppet that lost its strings, and He was the scissors that cut them.

(But I think that it was worth it. The taste of His lips was too tempting, too fulfilling, and I would do it a million more times, over and over, if only I could.)

He says that He forgives me, but I don't want to be forgiven, and He wouldn't be the one to do it. No, I want to be free. It is still as foolish a thought as it was before, but it's a different kind of foolishness, the kind that is only so because you thought you knew the answer but never did

what is life's greatest illusion?

innocence, my brother

what is the color of night?

Sanguine, my brother

what is the music of life?

silence, my brother

and I finally know there is only one kind of true freedom.

(The feeling of the blade on my throat, cutting away my life, is ever so amazing, because He granted me immortality, but not invincibility. He let me taste madness, but made me crave blood.)

Everything is lost. Everything is gone, finished, dead. It's dead to your eyes and mine, and to His; Him, whose beauty is blinding, whose mind is morokei.

If I am nothing, Sheogorath is everything.

(And... I think that's okay.)


End file.
